Well this time the emotions and lighting are being handled by a team of 35 animators and cinematics guys only. And they’re not scrubs. We have folks who’ve worked on movies like Shrek, King Kong, Gollum from LOTR and more. So, no compromises. It will still look like game engine (with the aforementioned enhancements, like depth of field and higher levels of detail) but it’s just going to be better.

With Halo 3, as with halo 2 and 1, we’re using the actual engine for cinematics. It’s a conscious decision based on a simple philosophy – don’t yank the player out of the game, and dazzle them with graphics that are alien to their gameplay experience. Don’t get me wrong, some of my favorite cinematics ever do exactly that, and in my opinion, successfully – Final Fantasy, DOA, Tekken even, all use high quality CG renders to display their cinematics. And the results are fantastic. They propel narrative and they’re a reward for completing gameplay tasks.